Advice for Excel integration

[Giora G]

Hi,
I’ve started to work on a product that will have a deep integration with Excel with the following requirements.

1. Installation: A one-time installation of the Add-on across all Excel files on a user's machine.
2. Tracking: The Add-on should adeptly track all user interactions within the spreadsheet, including cell updates, copy-pasting, format changes, and more, with the ability to store this data locally.
3. Communication:The Add-on supports two-way communication with a backend service.
4. UI Integration & Interactive Features: Incorporating a rich Excel right-pane copilot-like user interface; the add-on will be able to focus on specific areas within the spreadsheet, highlight cells, and interact with dynamic popups.

I’m wondering what Excel extensibility framework I should be using: VBA, JS, COM or .NET (or perhaps none of them fully support what I’m looking for). If anyone has experience or insights into which framework would be most appropriate for these requirements, I would greatly appreciate your guidance.

Thanks,
Giora

 

[Jeffrey Mahoney]

The tracking part has me worried. With that shear number of updates, it's going to bog Excel down very much. Not to mention, for each write, it will impede the users ability to copy and paste and undo. Are you suggesting that you want an Add-in to track the events from a different workbook. That's over my head; I would expect that to be built into the native workbook. Code can be created to store the data into other workbooks or text files.

Communication: I can't answer to that.

Interactive Features to support another workbook: Again, I don't know how an add-in is going to interface with the events on another workbook.

What your talking about is going to take a long time. Is this a testing tool or training tool? Sounds like big brother watching.